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< July/August 2001
	Hotline
Expedition News

Crossing the Antarctic Peninsula
In February, Polartec Challenge grant recipient Graham Charles successfully sea kayaked across the Antarctic Peninsula, reaching the northern tip of Adelaide Island after a 17-hour, 56-mile effort on the final day—his birthday. The 774-mile journey (where landings were far and few between) was the longest self-supported trip in the Southern Hemisphere. Starting at Hope Bay, the New Zealand team of Charles, Mark Jones and Marcus Waters reported that the final day of paddling was like "mushing through greased ice." Extremely cold weather on the last leg of the trip made for rather difficult conditions both in the water and out. "Our entire upper bodies were encrusted with ice," Charles said, "except our arms because they were moving."

(Anyone wishing to visit the Ushuaia region may hire or purchase any of the three Kevlar kayaks which were left there. For information: adventuephilosophy.com)

Two Canadian Canoe Expeditions
Two canoeing expeditions will head into the Canadian wilderness this summer with some lofty goals in mind. Michael Wolfe and three friends will canoe 1,500 miles from Reindeer Lake in Northern Saskatchewan to Chantry Inlet on the Arctic Ocean. The foursome will be paddling in order to raise funds for an endowment to send underprivileged kids to Camp Manito-wish, a premiere canoe-tripping camp in Northern Wisconsin.

Also headed north this summer are Middy Tilghman and Nelson Oldham, two of the top wildwater racers in the U.S. The pair is planning to run the entire 625-mile length of the Back River, from Central Canada out to the Arctic Ocean, going totally self-contained so they can travel fast and complete the whole river during the brief thaw period in July and August.

South Patagonia Icecap Expedition
Australians Eric Philips and Wade Fairley, with American expatriate Gary Kuehn, recently completed a 210-kilometer traverse of the South Patagonian Icecap, the third largest in the world. The Patagonian Icecap spans the border between Chile and Argentina and is notorious for its dreaded weather. On skis, the group towed Perception Phats as sleds and ascended Chile’s Jorge Montt Glacier at the icecaps’s northern end, traveling at less than 2 km per day due to heavy rain and dangerous crevasses. Once on the plateau, the team launched Quadrifoil kites and hit speeds of up to 45 km per hour using only wind power. After almost three weeks, the group descended via the Upsala Glacier into Argentina, where they paddled across three remote lakes before making the first descent of the Rio Catalina to Lago, Argentina. The expedition earned Eric Philips a place in history by becoming the first person to cross the Earth’s four largest icecaps—Antarctica to the South Pole; Greenland (also using the kayak method); Patagonia and Canada’s Ellesmere Island.